Disremembrance
by aphelion-orion
Summary: Cloud tries to piece his memories together, and realizes that some things are perhaps better left forgotten. [postFF7, angsty self reflection, hints of SxZxC]


**Pairing: **SxZxC  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Warning: **Post FF7-angst. Cloud levels of angst.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't make them gay. Square does. :P  
**Notes:** request fic for thornescratch

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**Disremembrance**

His mind is quiet now, no foreign feelings filtering into his own, no voices calling or talking to him or crooning _you're a puppet, my pretty little puppet_, and Cloud is grateful for that. It gives him time to pick up the pieces, to untangle the mess that was his mind, to carefully sort through his memories and find out which are his own, and which he /_stole_/ borrowed from Zack.

It is a time-consuming, painful process to dig around in his sieve of a memory and find out where the fakes are most prominent; it's like trying to catch the touch-me frogs in the damp, thick underbrush, the way he used to as a child - and here's another fake one, he thinks, because there are no frogs in the Nibel mountains, and the air isn't hot-moist and almost unbearably sweet, so it can't belong to him.

There are countless others like this one, but it is getting easier to identify them. Cloud can't explain how or why, but now that he has accepted who he is, what he is - weak, forever weak, desperately trying to put himself in a much more desirable person's place - he can see where the memories don't quite fit together, where there are mistakes, conflicts, where he has stolen gestures and behaviorisms from Zack. But still, even if he can now distinguish between himself and Zack more easily, he can't shake the feeling that something important is entirely missing from his memory, that if he hadn't been helpless and weak, it wouldn't have disappeared...

_Why are you so eager to put yourself down? If you could see what I see, you wouldn't believe yourself to be weak at all._

Cloud jumps slightly at the voice, but it isn't really here, it's a ghost-whisper from the past, gentle and encouraging, and slightly disconnected from everything. Strange, he thinks, that although it seems like something Zack would say, it doesn't sound like him at all - Zack never spoke so eloquently, and the voice is almost the opposite of his warm, teasing Gongagan drawl; deep, serious and refined. Not his memory, then, but Zack's, though he can't picture someone, _anyone_ saying that to Zack, either - Zack never let anything get to him and never lacked confidence in himself, which is one of the things Cloud admired so much about him.

He decides to concentrate on the voice, to try and attach it to a person, a situation, because even if it really belongs to Zack, there should still be a memory to go with it.

The one thing that attaches itself to the voice is, unexpectedly, the smell of artificial vanilla flavoring, and that is something familiar, something he knows must belong in his own memory, because he remembers the treat that goes with it - vanilla ice cream, an expensive import from Midgar, a rare luxury in the Strife household. Strange, though, that the scent should come with the voice because Cloud doesn't remember anyone talking to him like that, especially not back in Nibelheim, except maybe his mother. But there's more.

_Yeah, what he said. You know, Spike, you are probably the only guy on the planet who would take post-coital afterglow as his cue for angst. Besides, there's still the ice cream. Eat up!_

Definitely Zack, this one, right down to the leaps of logic in between his sentences. The other voice apparently agrees with this observation.

_You are aware, of course, that this argument made absolutely no sense. Also, isn't feeding the boy something that has just been used in the setup of said sexual encounter a little... inappropriate?_

_Ummm... no, not especially._

_Well, in this case... hand me a spoon._

As the conversation is growing more and more bizarre, Cloud can't shake the feeling that he knows the owner of the other voice, has heard it many times in the past half year, though its calm had by then been replaced by maniacal glee. Does this mean, then, that Zack had a relationship with Sephiroth, that the memory is his? But that doesn't seem quite right, not when they're talking about another person, when he can so clearly remember the scent of vanilla, as if he himself had...

_Hey, you guys_, he remembers someone complaining, _leave some for me!_

It takes him a moment to recognize his own voice, a bit higher and more childish than it is now, but when he does, he also realizes what that means.

His own disbelief can't stop the forceful return of the misplaced memory, which makes him remember an ordinary Sunday morning, a morning spent lying in bed more than half-naked and unselfconscious, snuggled in the crook of an arm of the most powerful man on the planet and having an argument over the appropriate uses of a tub of vanilla ice cream with his best friend, which was then abandoned in favor of feeding said ice cream to each other, with spoons and fingers and tongues. He remembers thinking back then that life couldn't get any better than this, that this was as close to perfect as one could possibly get.

The memory leaves Cloud gasping for breath and choking on hysterical laughter, which is slowly turning into dry sobs. He shouldn't have forgotten something important like that, but it would have been better to leave that memory sleeping, because now he knows how much he really lost, just like he knows with absolute certainty that no matter what he tries, it won't ever be perfect again.

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A/N: Cloud's head is a scary, scary place. I hope you still like it, even if Cloud angsts liek whoa. C&C, please?

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End file.
